surroundings, which were full of her, filled up the heart of the man with such a soft enchantment that for a long time he was not even impatient. She was not certain to be gracious to him, but the scene was gracious, full of her breath and influence, and permitted him to wrap himself in the shadow, as it were, of her presence, embracing him gently with all the corners and all the draperies that were fresh from her touch, enveloping him in all the nameless associations of the place in which she lived. For a long time he yielded himself up to this fascination, finding a subtle pleasure in it which stole all his strength from him, until the long shadows of the evening began to deepen, and the maids came to communicate their wonder to him. The dinner hour had arrived, and not even Mr. Charles had come home. They had gone by the shore towards the Spindle, both Miss Heriot and her uncle. Could anything have happened? Love is always fanciful, and takes fright upon any pretext. Could anything have happened? Fanshawe rushed out of the house in the subdued light of the evening, and set out over the cliffs at a pace which few people could have kept up with, fearing he knew not what, and not venturing to ask himself what he feared. At the same hour, on the same afternoon, another visitor was entering St. Andrews, coming down from the higher ground inland upon the picturesque old town, and looking out anxiously for the first sight of its towers and ruins. Of all unaccustomed travellers this was Miss Jean Hay-Heriot, from the High Street of Comlie, in a black bonnet big enough to take in her lace “borders”--with her keen eyes noting everything along the unaccustomed road, which yet she knew so well. To visit St. Andrews at all, was a wonderful effort on her part; but to visit it at so late an hour that she and her old horse and rusty coachman must be compelled to pass the night “in a strange place,” was more wonderful still. The reason of her visit was, however, natural enough. Mr. Charles’s mysterious intimations and hints of a mysterious something which was yet to be disclosed in his family, had already travelled over the length and breadth of Fife, with that amazing celerity which is peculiar to gossip of all kinds. It had reached Miss Jean’s ears that day after her early dinner, when the Minister himself had “stepped across” to communicate the strange news, which he had learned at a meeting of Presbytery, in the most direct manner, from the Reverend Simon Stutters, of Kinnucher, who had it from Mr. Morrison, of St. Rule’s, who had it from “auld Charlie” himself. The story, as was natural, had taken form and shape in these several transmissions, and now narrated circumstantially how Tom Heriot had been entrapped by the arts of a gamekeeper’s daughter in the Highlands; how this designing creature had flirted, and held off and on, till she wound him up to the pitch of consenting to marry her privately; how then he went off in